7. Valentina #2
“Valentina.” Suddenly, a female version of Connor Brennan is glowering at me.
“I have been up since three in the morning because a not-so-tiny human has decided they want out. I have not had anything to eat since dinner last night because apparently I’m not supposed to eat in labor which is the most unfair rule I have ever encountered in my life, so I am both hungry and exhausted and I would very much like to hear about something that isn’t my own body for five minutes.
” She inhales and exhales before turning the full force of that green-eyed gaze back on me. “Now, tell me about Cillian.”
Goddammit, this woman doesn’t play fair. “There’s nothing to tell,” I tell her, which is a lie so blatant she sees through it before I finish saying it.
“Valentina Santoro Brennan.”
“There’s—” I search for any word that could help, “it’s complicated and it’ll take too much time,” I try.
“I’m in labor,” she says flatly. “I have nothing but time.”
Oh goddammit.
Fine.
So I tell her.
Not everything—Emma is my best friend but she is also Leo’s wife and some information flows in directions I prefer it not to—but the cliff notes version.
The rules that stopped holding.
The way things have shifted in the past few weeks into something I don’t have a name for.
The dinner at the Brennan house.
The general quality of watching Cillian navigate their family and feeling something move in me that I wasn’t expecting.
Emma listens with both her full attention and another two contractions, and at the end of it she looks at me and exhales. “You like him.”
I stiffen at that, my stomach bottoming out. “I didn’t say that.”
“You like him,” she repeats, delighted. But then a contraction hits and she grabs my hand and the delight goes somewhere else for a moment.
When it passes she’s slightly sweaty and still smiling.
“Again, I didn’t say that—”
“Do you remember,” she starts, conversationally, “the first time we met?”
Her line of questioning confuses me. “Of course,” I say slowly, not sure where she’s going with this.
“You walked into that library,” she continues pleasantly, like she’s recounting a fond memory, “looked me up and down, and told me I was making myself comfortable in a kidnapping like it was a vacation.”
I stiffen, very much remembering that first initial meeting. “That was a different situation entirely—”
“You called me naive. You said I was acting like a guest instead of a captive.” She brushes a strand of hair out of her face. “You said, and I’m fairly confident I have this verbatim: what exactly is wrong with you that you’re not more upset about this.”
Shame courses through me as I remember the anger I felt when I saw Emma Brennan sitting in my brother’s library as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “I was concerned—”
“You were hostile,” she says warmly, not at all looking offended.
“You decided I was the enemy before I said a word. You came in ready to hate me and you were very good at it.” She squeezes my hand once.
“And now you’re sitting in my labor room with feelings about a Brennan and I just want to make sure we’re both appreciating the full scope of this moment. ”
Okay no, these are two different situations and I don’t like that she’s trying to compare them. “Cillian is not—he wasn’t holding me against my will—”
“No, he was just handed to you by my father, which is arguably worse.” She watches me.
“Val. I’m not making fun of you. I’m seriously super happy.
” A contraction starts and she breathes through it, grip tightening.
When it ebbs, she continues, “I’m delighted because I remember sitting in that library thinking this woman is going to be the most exhausting person I’ve ever met and I was right.
I love you anyway and now you’re making the same face I made when I realized I was in trouble with Leo. ”
I scowl at her. “I am not making a face—”
“You’re making a face.”
“I’m not…” I stop and press my lips together. I look at the wall. “It’s not the same as you and Leo.”
“It never is,” she says simply. “Mine was a kidnapping. Yours is an arrangement. They’re never the same.
That’s not the point.” She turns my hand over in hers.
“The point is that you came in there ready to protect Leo from me. You told me I didn’t belong.
And now you’re in it up to your neck with someone you didn’t choose and something is happening that you don’t know what to do with.
” She raises her eyebrows. “I’m just saying.
I was right about me. I might be right about you. ”
I look at her for a long moment. She looks back, green eyes steady, a small smile at the corner of her mouth.
“I hate you,” I tell her.
She breathes out a laugh. “No, you don’t.”
I exhale. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admit, deciding to throw Emma a bone. “With him. I don’t have a framework for it.”
“I know.” She squeezes my hand. “You don’t need a framework. You just need to stop performing your way out of it.” She holds my gaze. “You told me I was acting like a guest. Stop acting like a guest in your own life, Val. Whatever this is—let it be something.”
Another contraction takes her before I can answer.
Which is, possibly, a mercy.
By mid-morning the waiting room has filled up.
My mother arrives looking immaculate.
Gianna Santoro could be in a natural disaster and she would emerge with her hair right.
She sits beside me and takes my hand and squeezes. I lean into her slightly, letting myself be mothered.
Teresa arrives half an hour after that.
She comes in quietly, and she stops when she gets to the door of the labor ward.
She’s holding her bag with both hands and she looks…unsure.
Scared, really.
She’s looking at the door to Emma’s room but she isn’t going through it.
I get up and go to her. “Teresa.”
She looks at me. Her green eyes are very bright and very afraid.
But she’s not afraid for Emma; she’s afraid of the rejection, that Emma won’t want her there, afraid of what Connor has made of things and whether she’s allowed to want something for herself.
“She needs her mother,” I tell her. “Go.”
Teresa looks at me for a moment more. Then something settles in her face. She lifts her chin and goes through the door.
I stand in the hallway and listen to Emma’s voice through the door. My friend is surprised to see her mother. “Mom!” she exclaims, her voice cracking slightly. I close my eyes and let out a long breath.
Good.
Leo comes out of Emma’s room at intervals to update us whether we’ve asked or not.
He has regained some of his composure but not all of it — he updates us on dilation, and my mother listens to this with a wry look on her face as Leo explains exactly how big four centimeters dilated is.
I must have a similar look because is Leo seriously mansplaining labor to our mother who has birthed three children?
My mother decides not to say anything, which I find to be very admirable. I wouldn’t be as composed.
At hour seven Emma’s epidural has been administered and the atmosphere from behind the door improves noticeably.
At hour nine Emma is apparently telling everyone she loves them and also that she’s starving.
The nurse has explained, again, that she cannot eat, and Emma has said that’s a bullshit rule.
“She’s feeling better,” I say to my mother as Emma loudly says how badly she wants a Jimmy John’s turkey sandwich.
“The epidural is God’s gift to humans,” Leo says. He looks slightly less gray and sits down between our mother.
He puts his elbows on his knees and stares at the floor while my mother rubs his back.
I look at my brother, feeling a rush of sympathy for him. Leo may be the head of the Santoro family, but he has no power or control over childbirth.
“She’s going to be okay,” I tell him again, because it’s the thing he needs to hear, even though he knows it. Some things need to be said out loud.
“I know,” he sighs. He’s quiet for a moment. “I didn’t expect it to feel like this.”
My mother hums. “Like what.?”
He looks at his hands. “Like everything I’ve ever been afraid of, happening in the best possible way.”
I don’t say anything. Instead, I put my hand over his.
He turns his palm up and squeezes once before we both remember we’re in a hospital waiting room and pull ourselves together.
It’s hour twelve when the elevator opens and Cillian walks in.
I see him before he sees me and my first thought is: he came.
My second, more traitorous, thought is how good he looks walking through a door, which is a completely stupid thing to think in a hospital waiting room.
He’s in jeans and a dark jacket, his auburn hair slightly wind-roughed from outside.
He’s carrying two large bags and a tray of coffees, and he scans the room before he finds me.
He nods in acknowledgment.
I’m here.
He sets everything on the table and starts distributing.
Coffee to my mother, who accepts it with graciousness.
Coffee to Teresa, who came out of Emma’s room an hour ago and has been sitting in the corner since.
She takes it with both hands with a quiet thank you.
She looks at him with an expression I can’t read.
Coffee to me, which he delivers to my chair personally, and his fingers brush mine when I take it.
My heart pounds only because I’m weak for caffeine.
Then he crosses the waiting room with one of the bags and he holds it out to my brother.
Leo looks at the bag then looks at Cillian.
Something is happening in that exchange that I am not sure I fully understand.
These two men, who have been at opposite ends of everything for six years, are standing here in a hospital waiting room at hour twelve of my best friend’s labor.
“It’s a sandwich,” Cillian tells him. “Eat it.”
Leo shakes his head. “I’m not hungry.”
“You look like you’re going to fall down,” Cillian says flatly. “If you go back in that room and pass out because you didn’t eat, she’s going to have to worry about you on top of everything else.” He presses the bag firmly into Leo’s chest. “Eat the sandwich, Leo.”
A silence.